Before we get on with the list, I want to make sure you don’t miss this year’s Ars Technica Charity Drive sweepstake. You can win one of 160 prizes, including limited edition gaming collectibles, all while helping out a good cause. Entries are due by January 3, so check it out if you haven’t already, and thanks in advance for your donation.

The end of a console cycle is always one of the most exciting times for gaming. While the encroaching Xbox One and PlayStation 4 ate up a lot of media attention throughout the year, veteran developers with years of experience on older hardware proved that there was still some life in the systems that would technically be “last generation” by year’s end. Those developers created some of the most epic cinematic gaming ever this year, building on the ambition and false starts of those that came before them to create some of the medium’s most memorable experiences.

On the other end of the spectrum, indie game developers were busy effectively examining the bounds of what a video game could be this year. 2013 was a year in which many of these professionals showed an incredible comfort and willingness to use the medium in entirely new ways, reinventing genres and also exploring the potential for direct, emotional interactive storytelling. Amidst it all, there were plenty of games that were less revolutionary while being incredibly refined and satisfying examples of their genres. And of course there were a few stinkers that utterly failed to live up to lofty expectations.

It was hard to narrow down this year’s offerings to just 20 top games, but Sam and I are happy with the list we ended up with. Even so, we ended up leaving out some of the best-loved games from other members of the Ars staff. Their list of personal selections includes many more very worthwhile games. For now, though, please enjoy our picks for the best games of 2013.

The Best Video Games of 2013

20. The Swapper

The Swapper might one day be lost to the sands of gaming time. It's another entry in the modern deluge of puzzle platformers, and it certainly holds its own thanks to a welcome twist on the genre—namely, the ability to create and manage a little army of clones to solve puzzles. The game flexes the ruleset of how to create and manage those clones with the right number of puzzles and a gently sloping difficulty curve.

What has stayed with me about The Swapper is its self-awareness—that the creators looked at this weird gimmick and said, “What if our in-game characters had to come to terms with this being an actual technology?” Thus, the solid game comes wrapped in a layer of quality sci-fi. The gameplay and the plot nudge one another along for a very well-paced piece of indie genius.-Sam Machkovech

19. Plants vs. Zombies 2

This sequel isn’t an incredible revolution over the original Plants vs. Zombies, but it doesn’t have to be. The first game was an addictive, accessible tower defense game that got surprisingly deep in the late game. The long-awaited follow-up adds a few handy new plant-based weapons, but it shines in its new selection of zombies and stages with environmental hazards and boons. The main game is easy enough to blaze through, but an “endless” wave mode and the ability to revisit levels with additional, interesting challenges loaded on top gives the game a much-needed longevity.

EA’s transition to a free-to-play model for the sequel has drawn a lot of controversy, but I maintain that the game doesn’t really feel like a traditional free-to-play title. Any challenge in the game can be overcome with planning and skill without really being tempted to throw money at new super powers, in my experience. Yes, you have to backtrack a bit to avoid paying money for later levels, but the new challenges found in those subsequent level visits never feel like a pointless “grind.” In the end, PvZ2 is as addictive as the first one—but without the need to spend a cent.-Kyle Orland

18. DmC

The writing was on the wall for a total gaming disaster here. Start with a hack-and-slash franchise that had been run into the ground after years of staleness. Pitch an out-of-nowhere reboot of that heavily gothic-influenced franchise, with a new "emo" styling that was immediately hated by the Internet's vocal minority. Add a development credit from Ninja Theory, which managed both a critical darling and sales-figure poison with Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. And, of course, plan a release date in the dumping-ground month of January.

And yet players got a real beast of a reboot here, ticking every box that could be expected of the Devil May Cry series. Phenomenal art direction pumped color and visual trickery into the game's wild worlds. Some new weapon-swap tricks added the right amount of change to the series' otherwise silky smooth combo-racking, kill-'em-all ferocity. A nimble, no-nonsense script about pouty devil-battlers walked the line between self-awareness and hipster cool, carried well by a great voice cast and rendered in finely animated heroes and villains alike.

It's fun, it's violent, it's nimble, and it doesn't over stay its welcome (though many high-challenge alternate modes await its serious addicts). As a bonus, PC players can run the whole gorgeous, frenetic thing at 1080p and 60 fps, which means players can enjoy a super-early taste of what you'd want in a next-gen, couch-friendly hack-and-slash. Capcom would be wise to reboot this reboot for the newest consoles—at the very least, to get the boring taste of Ryse out of our mouths.-Sam Machkovech

17. Guacamelee

As far as its basic design, Guacamelee doesn’t provide much that’s very exciting or new. The basic find-a-new-item-to-unlock-a-new-area-on-a-sprawling-2D-map has been done to death by countless games, most notably the Metroid and Castlevania series. Guacamelee apes the basic structure of these games quite well and provides a well-paced feeling of advancement before its too-soon conclusion.

What pushes Guacamelee over the top, though, is the extremely strong sense of style imbued in every bit of the game’s presentation. Everything from the ridiculous, luchador-culture-infused plot and dialogue to the brightly colored characters and environments that look like cardboard cutouts to the driving Spanish guitar soundtrack are quite unlike anything else being done in video games.

It all comes together to create a strong sense of place that has stuck with me through the year. Guacamelee's atmosphere stands out from the overdone sci-fi, fantasy, and war-torn atmospherics that together capture 99 percent of all other games these days. That’s enough to earn it a sentimental spot on this list.-Kyle Orland

16. Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon

In the next 10 years, computers and consoles will advance so far that video games will be able to perfectly emulate the awful, cheesy effects of late '80s action movies. It's hilarious to think that a lot of technology will one day be employed in rendering everything from awkward puppets to hilariously low-rent special effects, but it should happen, and Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon is a testament to such a good idea.

“Sweep and clear all those motherfuckers,” you're told early on as you step into the neon doomscape of this ostensible Far Cry 3 spin-off. This is more like Far Cry 3 spun out of control, though; while the games share an engine and a control scheme, you're freed up from FC3's over-serious hunt-and-hide conceit. Now, you kick ass as a super-soldier named Max who tears cyber-hearts out of his robo-foes and grunts angry-cool nonsense. Oh, and instead of avoiding tigers, you square off against dino-dragon things that glow with radiation, like they’ve been fitted for the world's craziest game of laser tag.

FC3 was not a failure by any stretch, but here is a much more interesting, amusing, and downright fun take on the series, scaled and priced for quicker, more satisfying consumption. It's hard to get big-dumb-and-fun just right, so treasure the fact that someone actually pulled off a modern Duke Nukem game with all of the late '80s trimmings.-Sam Machkovech

201 Reader Comments

In that everyone knows the game that ends up #1 on lists is not actually the best game, but rather the one that the critics feel has an important message that fits their ideology.

I am sure people will look forward to play Papers Please as they looked forward to seeing The Artist... they won't.

I totally agree. It's SO obvious Kyle, Sam and the rest of Ars are just pushing their anti-Communism ideology with their number one choice.

Seriously though, did you play Papers Please or are you just basing your critique on the fact that the game doesn't interest you at all?

I thought the 10 people who bought it were all already accounted for.

So that's a firm "NO" on my question, which is what I expected. It's easy to be glib and dismissive of certain non-mainstream games when you have no experience playing them. And it's especially easy to decry the critics that actually appreciate these games, indie or not, as having some sort of hidden agenda when 1) you have no real grasp of the material in question, and 2) you clearly have little to no clue what the supposed agenda is.

But by all means, continue taking pot shots at the people who actually put the work in to understand these games, their development, and the trends they represent because after all...what would an Internet forum be without a few trolls?

I can not believe that you included PvZ 2 on this list. It's utterly mind-blowing. PvZ was an absolutely fantastic game when it came out. I was extremely excited for the 2nd one. But the 2nd one is nothing but a naked money-grab that is an insult to fans. Gamers are a spineless bunch. Sure they're bitchy, and they go online and whine and complain and claim to be boycotting things, but EA and the other publishers know the truth. Gamers are incapable of not playing games. It doesn't matter how expensive they are, how bad they are, nothing. They'll buy it. They'll lie and say they're boycotting, but they'll buy it. The Sims is a great example. The outcry over its problems was, justifiably, deafening. Yet, it is the best selling game ever released on Origin. Money talks, bullshit walks. Gamers are spineless. And PvZ 2 is a creation to exploit that fact.

Even if they had made a full version of the game available for a single price that included all of the add-on content, it would have been far less odious, but EA intends to mine gamers for every penny they have and they know that habitualizing the simple-minded gamers to repeated purchases to 'upgrade' their games is the best way to do that. It's deplorable and gamers should really wake up and start ACTUALLY boycotting such things. Don't even pirate the damn games. Just do. not. play. them. At all.

But by all means, continue taking pot shots at the people who actually put the work in to understand these games, their development, and the trends they represent because after all...what would an Internet forum be without a few trolls?

That is exactly my point, you are looking at their development and the trends the represent then giving that weight based on your indie bias, then factoring that into the game review process. Which is giving indie games a handicap and making them way higher on a list then they should be.

Games should be judged solely on the game itself, not its development, not industry trends.

But hey keep on acting like you actually bothered to buy these games and play through them yourself.

Sim City 2013 belongs on the most disappointing video games of 2013 on my list.Sim City 2013: Cities of Tomorrow is in my top 5.

No joke, the game has come a long way since launch and I was one of the few (apparently) who felt that Sim City was getting incredibly stale and boring, with little more than graphical updates between versions-- strategy remaining largely in tact from the original that I easily sank 300+ hours into back on my SNES before the internal battery died. My time invested in each of the games dropped off exponentially with each release.

Really, when the strategy in 4 consisted of "Need more _____." "Build more _____" it just lost its appeal and just about every city I made looked and functioned exactly the same. The game needed some changing.

I always have internet and I'm not some crying baby trying to politicize video games, so I couldn't care less about the anti-hype and drama over the game. But in March the simulation just ran horribly and I spent half the time trying to "cheat" the AI to get it to do what I wanted it to do. So I stopped.

Until November when the expansion came out, and boy has the game changed. It's certainly different than most Sim City games, and I feel like something new and fresh is what the series needed. Because if Sim City 5 was just 4 with updated graphics.... it may have sold more, but that wouldn't have made it a better game. I'd probably play it for 5 hours Max... as opposed to the 170 so far in Cities of Tomorrow.

So that's a firm "NO" on my question, which is what I expected. It's easy to be glib and dismissive of certain non-mainstream games when you have no experience playing them. And it's especially easy to decry the critics that actually appreciate these games, indie or not, as having some sort of hidden agenda when 1) you have no real grasp of the material in question, and 2) you clearly have little to no clue what the supposed agenda is.

But by all means, continue taking pot shots at the people who actually put the work in to understand these games, their development, and the trends they represent because after all...what would an Internet forum be without a few trolls?

I agree with him, to an extent. I mean... there were plenty of good indie games released this year. Don't Starve, La Mulana (Albeit, remake), Spelunky, State of Decay, Rogue Legacy, Thomas Was Alone... all of which were fantastic in their own right.

But what games made this list? The Stanley Parable, Antichamber, Going Home, and Papers Please (among others.) As much as I loved Stanley, this list is comprised of the kinds of games people who regularly visit Museums of Modern Art and stare at splash paintings would enjoy. Not to mention all 4 of these games are HORRIBLY overpriced for what they are. Even at 75% off I couldn't recommend The Stanley Parable. It's good, but Full-clearing it takes like, an hour.

In the critical world, gameplay and value falls below both pretentiousness and politics. Don't think 2013 is a bad year based off this list. There were plenty of good games out there. (Seriously, go play Rogue Legacy, like, now.) These games were left out because they were pure, unadulterated fun. No message about humanity or friendship. No obscure out of the way control schemes. Just... Here's a sword. Kill shit. Have fun.

Kyle is entitled to feeling these games are good just as much as people are entitled to feel that 3 basketballs floating in a fish tank is worthy of an in-depth discussion about life. But he's not alone in the world of critics. Unfortunately.

Even at 75% off I couldn't recommend The Stanley Parable. It's good, but Full-clearing it takes like, an hour.

While I'm sympathetic to your main points, this kind of argument annoys me. Why do so many gamers judge a game's worth based on the number of hours it takes?

I suppose this is one reason why big publishers churn out high priced games that are overly long and descend into repetitiveness after the first act. I think the first game that made this painfully obvious to me was the original Halo where they didn't even bother to make even a slight change to the two corridors you grind your way down for most the game. Ok, I exaggerate there but only slightly.

So that's a firm "NO" on my question, which is what I expected. It's easy to be glib and dismissive of certain non-mainstream games when you have no experience playing them. And it's especially easy to decry the critics that actually appreciate these games, indie or not, as having some sort of hidden agenda when 1) you have no real grasp of the material in question, and 2) you clearly have little to no clue what the supposed agenda is.

But by all means, continue taking pot shots at the people who actually put the work in to understand these games, their development, and the trends they represent because after all...what would an Internet forum be without a few trolls?

I agree with him, to an extent. I mean... there were plenty of good indie games released this year. Don't Starve, La Mulana (Albeit, remake), Spelunky, State of Decay, Rogue Legacy, Thomas Was Alone... all of which were fantastic in their own right.

But what games made this list? The Stanley Parable, Antichamber, Going Home, and Papers Please (among others.) As much as I loved Stanley, this list is comprised of the kinds of games people who regularly visit Museums of Modern Art and stare at splash paintings would enjoy. Not to mention all 4 of these games are HORRIBLY overpriced for what they are. Even at 75% off I couldn't recommend The Stanley Parable. It's good, but Full-clearing it takes like, an hour.

In the critical world, gameplay and value falls below both pretentiousness and politics. Don't think 2013 is a bad year based off this list. There were plenty of good games out there. (Seriously, go play Rogue Legacy, like, now.) These games were left out because they were pure, unadulterated fun. No message about humanity or friendship. No obscure out of the way control schemes. Just... Here's a sword. Kill shit. Have fun.

Kyle is entitled to feeling these games are good just as much as people are entitled to feel that 3 basketballs floating in a fish tank is worthy of an in-depth discussion about life. But he's not alone in the world of critics. Unfortunately.

I would gladly pay 15 dollars for Stanley Parable now that I know how much I enjoyed the game. $/hour is one metric of how much entertainment you get our of game but it ignores quality. The 3 hours I put into Stanley Parable were my favorite 3 hours of gaming ever. Don't disregard quality when considering a purchase. Unfortunately there is no good way to know the quality of a game considering personal preference before you play it so all you have to go on are other people's opinions, be they critics or friends.

You know you're getting old when you look at a list like this, and instead of going "oh yeah, that was a great game!" you go "hmm...maybe I'll pick that one up on a steam sale in years to come."

You've hit the nail on the head there. My top 20 list would be "Games I finally discovered/purchased this year." I don't think I played 20 new releases this year, but thanks to Steam sales I've played many more titles released in the last couple years. The games I did play on this list I think belong there, but that's pretty common when people think of most of them.

The Last of Us: A lot of detractors make good points about it, but that game got my feels on at several points. I also greatly enjoy the different mindsets you had to have in dealing with zombies and human enemies respectively. The artwork was just stupefying. If it weren't so dangerous I'd totally want to live in that world.

I also played Grand Theft Auto 5, and feel it belongs on the list. Bioshock infinite was.....ok. I sold it on Craigslist after finishing because I'll never play through it again. It was fun, and interesting...but not in a way that will bring me back over and over.

Edit: Cleaned up some stuff when I went back and noted down all three games I played on the list.

Skyrim, Rogue Legacy & Borderlands 2 kept me busy this year.

Skyrim I've had since it came out, but revisit every now and then just to see what the mod'ing community has done.

Rogue Legacy sucked me in ... god knows why, b/c the game play was so simple, but I couldn't stop playing it.

Borderlands 2, for all its monotony, has me keep playing through it as each character.

I've got Bioshock Infinity on my "to get" list, but I wasn't too impressed with the 1st and felt let down by the 2nd, hance I'm not in a rush to get the 3rd.

Far Cry 3 is on my "to get" list, but, again, #1 was so-so and #2 was a bit of a let down... so no rush.

Likewise, the main reason I wait and wait and wait to buy games these days is b/c dev's keep rolling out DLC for games months and months later. I just want to buy a GOTY edition that's all inclusive. I hate this "season pass" BS, this not knowing when the final DLC will hit, this "let's sell a DLC for $30" BS. All of it has really ran me off as a gamer that grew up in the 80's and 90's.

I like to sit around and wait, see what games everyone raves and rants about, wait for every little nit-picking thing to show up for the game, then pick it up fully patched for a fraction of the price years later. Do I miss the co-op action of some new releases? I guess so. But, most games I do co-op on are real let downs. Dead Island sucked. Borderlands 2 is bearable, but with the host dropping the game or some d-bag loot ninja'ing everything, or everyone rushing through and not working as a cohesive team it can be enough to run me off.

Games that are limited to a specific console should not be given high accolades, they intentionally limited themselves to a certain audience. Personally don't even play console games at the moment, but the kids do and I did not see many of these console games you listed in their need to play list.

why shouldn't they deserve accolade?Exclusives have nothing to do with purposefully "limiting their audience" but with selling hardware(usually).Just because Last of Us is on a single console in no way invalidates how good the game is.

Exactly. After all, Metroid, Super Mario, Zelda and Pikmin games are all exclusive to Nintendo. Does that mean they should be excluded from recognition? What about PC exclusive games, then? Maybe the OP really means that "only games I have platforms for are worth the time"?

Far Cry 3 is on my "to get" list, but, again, #1 was so-so and #2 was a bit of a let down... so no rush.

The combo of Far Cry 3 and Blood Dragon is so far ahead of those two games that I don't even remember them anymore. I never made it to the end of FC1 (just turned into a spammy slog of bullet sponges and flying one-hit-kills) and FC2 was just plain clunky. By comparison, I think I played all but a handful of side missions in FC3 (the trials, mostly) and am replaying Blood Dragon now.

Thanks to the original Crysis and Far Cry 3, FC 1 and 2 are now relegated to the same part of my brain where I repress my memories of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls.

Likewise, the main reason I wait and wait and wait to buy games these days is b/c dev's keep rolling out DLC for games months and months later. I just want to buy a GOTY edition that's all inclusive. I hate this "season pass" BS, this not knowing when the final DLC will hit, this "let's sell a DLC for $30" BS. All of it has really ran me off as a gamer that grew up in the 80's and 90's.

I like to sit around and wait, see what games everyone raves and rants about, wait for every little nit-picking thing to show up for the game, then pick it up fully patched for a fraction of the price years later. Do I miss the co-op action of some new releases? I guess so. But, most games I do co-op on are real let downs. Dead Island sucked. Borderlands 2 is bearable, but with the host dropping the game or some d-bag loot ninja'ing everything, or everyone rushing through and not working as a cohesive team it can be enough to run me off.

I totally hear you on that point.

I also get the idea that the games you play most may not be from this year. Interestingly the games I played the most this year (and are my current favorites) I didn't discover this year except for Rimworld. Since that Blizzard card game is in the list, I feel like I can list most of them since they're in active development still but under early release models.

Even at 75% off I couldn't recommend The Stanley Parable. It's good, but Full-clearing it takes like, an hour.

While I'm sympathetic to your main points, this kind of argument annoys me. Why do so many gamers judge a game's worth based on the number of hours it takes?

I suppose this is one reason why big publishers churn out high priced games that are overly long and descend into repetitiveness after the first act. I think the first game that made this painfully obvious to me was the original Halo where they didn't even bother to make even a slight change to the two corridors you grind your way down for most the game. Ok, I exaggerate there but only slightly.

I don't judge it based on the amount of hours it took. The game had about 5-6 laugh out loud jokes that I paid $15 for. Indeed some of the funniest MOMENTS in gaming, but in between those moments were a lot of backtracking the same path over and over again. I honestly felt the demo was better than the actual game. =/

Even if you were to say "$/hour of FUN" it still falls short. A game can last a short period of time and be worthwhile (See:Portal1/Portal2) but MOST of TSP was either walking down the same corridor over and over, or sitting back and watching the narrator talk.

TSP was no less repetitive than the average AAA game. In fact, it is by the game's very nature that it's repetitive.

Ugh, I hate these lists that put some "cute" game at #1 to prove how special a snowflake the author is. It's like when EGM did the 100 best games of all time and chose Tetris for #1. Papers, Please puts The Last of Us in the number 2 spot for game of the year? Oh, please - whoever makes a call like that is probably the kind of goofball who brags at the party that "I don't even own a TV!"

Ugh, I hate these lists that put some "cute" game at #1 to prove how special a snowflake the author is. It's like when EGM did the 100 best games of all time and chose Tetris for #1. Papers, Please puts The Last of Us in the number 2 spot for game of the year? Oh, please - whoever makes a call like that is probably the kind of goofball who brags at the party that "I don't even own a TV!"

Oh man that guy is so cool he cut the cord, has 100 indie games on his steam account, and has a pardon Snowden bumper sticker right next to a legalize it bumper sticker on his prius!

Even at 75% off I couldn't recommend The Stanley Parable. It's good, but Full-clearing it takes like, an hour.

While I'm sympathetic to your main points, this kind of argument annoys me. Why do so many gamers judge a game's worth based on the number of hours it takes?

I suppose this is one reason why big publishers churn out high priced games that are overly long and descend into repetitiveness after the first act. I think the first game that made this painfully obvious to me was the original Halo where they didn't even bother to make even a slight change to the two corridors you grind your way down for most the game. Ok, I exaggerate there but only slightly.

It shouldn't be used as a be-all, end-all sort of metric, but it's critically important to keep in mind. Ultimately, some sort of value metric should be taken into account. If The Last of Us cost $6000 instead of $60, would you still justify putting it on this list? Of course not, because for most people, it's not worth playing at that cost.

The important thing for the value metric isn't $/time to complete, it's $/total time played. Fallout 3 was possible to "beat" in a matter of just a few hours. But for most people who enjoyed it, Fallout 3 wasn't a "sub-10 hour game" it was a game that took 40+ 70+ 100+ hours of playtime to put aside. A game like Stanley Parable (full disclosure, I have not played and have no interest in playing it) doesn't really have much for replayability. According to the poster you're replying to, it can be fully completed in less than an hour. If the experience of the game is worth $15 to you, it's worth $15 to you. That's not much different from the cost/hour metric for taking a date to a movie. But in the realm of video games, there's many far better value propositions, and that should definitely be taken into account before purchasing a game. For anyone on a budget, $15 for an hour of The Stanley Parable means $0 for Rogue Legacy (a game I got 37 hours out of) or $0 for FTL + Binding of Isaac (combined for 27 hours for me) or $0 for Terraria (124 hours and counting).

A game like Stanley Parable (full disclosure, I have not played and have no interest in playing it) doesn't really have much for replayability. According to the poster you're replying to, it can be fully completed in less than an hour.

Well considering I believe there's about 18 endings. I don't see how one could complete it in an hour.

I agree that Papers Please is a great indie game with a lot of style. However I disagree about Beyond Two Souls being a disappointment: I loved it even more than I loved Heavy Rain. Not all players like the same gameplay, you should take that into account. For instance, a good movie critic will advise a movie depending on the viewer's taste for specific genres, why should it be otherwise for games? As an avid adventure game player, I loved the graphical prowess and story of Quantic Dream's last title.

Even at 75% off I couldn't recommend The Stanley Parable. It's good, but Full-clearing it takes like, an hour.

While I'm sympathetic to your main points, this kind of argument annoys me. Why do so many gamers judge a game's worth based on the number of hours it takes?

I suppose this is one reason why big publishers churn out high priced games that are overly long and descend into repetitiveness after the first act. I think the first game that made this painfully obvious to me was the original Halo where they didn't even bother to make even a slight change to the two corridors you grind your way down for most the game. Ok, I exaggerate there but only slightly.

It shouldn't be used as a be-all, end-all sort of metric, but it's critically important to keep in mind. Ultimately, some sort of value metric should be taken into account. If The Last of Us cost $6000 instead of $60, would you still justify putting it on this list? Of course not, because for most people, it's not worth playing at that cost.

The important thing for the value metric isn't $/time to complete, it's $/total time played. Fallout 3 was possible to "beat" in a matter of just a few hours. But for most people who enjoyed it, Fallout 3 wasn't a "sub-10 hour game" it was a game that took 40+ 70+ 100+ hours of playtime to put aside. A game like Stanley Parable (full disclosure, I have not played and have no interest in playing it) doesn't really have much for replayability. According to the poster you're replying to, it can be fully completed in less than an hour. If the experience of the game is worth $15 to you, it's worth $15 to you. That's not much different from the cost/hour metric for taking a date to a movie. But in the realm of video games, there's many far better value propositions, and that should definitely be taken into account before purchasing a game. For anyone on a budget, $15 for an hour of The Stanley Parable means $0 for Rogue Legacy (a game I got 37 hours out of) or $0 for FTL + Binding of Isaac (combined for 27 hours for me) or $0 for Terraria (124 hours and counting).

None of which means anything to me. I'd rather pay $10 for a half hour of the best entertainment than $1 for 20 hours of dull, mediocre entertainment. If budget vs time is your primary metric, then the only games you should be playing are Free-to-Play, you can get as many hours as you want from them. Woot, infinite ratio!

Sure, if you reduce your budget down to a zero-sum game you have to make hard choices about what you might like, and you won't always guess right - but apparently you did buy and play all of them, so what does that say? I thought I might like Dead Island but I hated it, I could have spent that money on something I might have enjoyed. My friends loved it. Bad investments, wrong choices, and personal taste are just part of life, let it go.

You have to get outside your box and perceive that some other people value completely different things than you do, not just the same things with maybe slightly different weights. Once you figure out what you value and determine what other people value, you can decide if their opinion has any meaning to you, but you certainly can't demand that they value what you do. I honestly have no idea how long I've played any games this year, I just remember which ones were fun and which weren't.

Can someone please explain to me what the point of any "Best of" article is?

Besides to troll for some kind of response from the community, I see no reason for them.

Time was it was about celebrating the truly great, the truly innovative, now the sites are so overrun with indie snob critics like the film industry that it's about trying to trick people into picking something up. So games stuck in 1988 with a political message and not backed by a big faceless corporation get cheered.

Even at 75% off I couldn't recommend The Stanley Parable. It's good, but Full-clearing it takes like, an hour.

While I'm sympathetic to your main points, this kind of argument annoys me. Why do so many gamers judge a game's worth based on the number of hours it takes?

I suppose this is one reason why big publishers churn out high priced games that are overly long and descend into repetitiveness after the first act. I think the first game that made this painfully obvious to me was the original Halo where they didn't even bother to make even a slight change to the two corridors you grind your way down for most the game. Ok, I exaggerate there but only slightly.

It shouldn't be used as a be-all, end-all sort of metric, but it's critically important to keep in mind. Ultimately, some sort of value metric should be taken into account. If The Last of Us cost $6000 instead of $60, would you still justify putting it on this list? Of course not, because for most people, it's not worth playing at that cost.

The important thing for the value metric isn't $/time to complete, it's $/total time played. Fallout 3 was possible to "beat" in a matter of just a few hours. But for most people who enjoyed it, Fallout 3 wasn't a "sub-10 hour game" it was a game that took 40+ 70+ 100+ hours of playtime to put aside. A game like Stanley Parable (full disclosure, I have not played and have no interest in playing it) doesn't really have much for replayability. According to the poster you're replying to, it can be fully completed in less than an hour. If the experience of the game is worth $15 to you, it's worth $15 to you. That's not much different from the cost/hour metric for taking a date to a movie. But in the realm of video games, there's many far better value propositions, and that should definitely be taken into account before purchasing a game. For anyone on a budget, $15 for an hour of The Stanley Parable means $0 for Rogue Legacy (a game I got 37 hours out of) or $0 for FTL + Binding of Isaac (combined for 27 hours for me) or $0 for Terraria (124 hours and counting).

None of which means anything to me. I'd rather pay $10 for a half hour of the best entertainment than $1 for 20 hours of dull, mediocre entertainment. If budget vs time is your primary metric, then the only games you should be playing are Free-to-Play, you can get as many hours as you want from them. Woot, infinite ratio!

Sure, if you reduce your budget down to a zero-sum game you have to make hard choices about what you might like, and you won't always guess right - but apparently you did buy and play all of them, so what does that say? I thought I might like Dead Island but I hated it, I could have spent that money on something I might have enjoyed. My friends loved it. Bad investments, wrong choices, and personal taste are just part of life, let it go.

You have to get outside your box and perceive that some other people value completely different things than you do, not just the same things with maybe slightly different weights. Once you figure out what you value and determine what other people value, you can decide if their opinion has any meaning to you, but you certainly can't demand that they value what you do. I honestly have no idea how long I've played any games this year, I just remember which ones were fun and which weren't.

But that's an absurd false dichotomy. You can pay $15 for an hour of above average entertainment, or $15 for 100 hours of a game that's interesting enough for you to play for 100 hours. I don't know where people come up with this idea that somehow a game worth playing for 100 hours is somehow inherently inferior entertainment than a game not capable of retaining anyone's attention for more than 60 minutes.

Can short games be entertaining? Sure. Does being short someone automatically make the short time you play in inherently better than the longer time played in an obviously far more entertaining game? There's absolutely no reason to ever even attempt to make that argument.

A game like Stanley Parable (full disclosure, I have not played and have no interest in playing it) doesn't really have much for replayability. According to the poster you're replying to, it can be fully completed in less than an hour.

Well considering I believe there's about 18 endings. I don't see how one could complete it in an hour.

Spoiler: show

Have you played the game? TSP is a 1-5 minute game that you replay over and over.

For example, you start in a room... you close the door--- that's an ending. You walk through the offices, walk through the right door, then turn down a hallway-- that's another ending. (The orange dots aren't endings by the way, merely easter eggs.)

Even at 75% off I couldn't recommend The Stanley Parable. It's good, but Full-clearing it takes like, an hour.

While I'm sympathetic to your main points, this kind of argument annoys me. Why do so many gamers judge a game's worth based on the number of hours it takes?

I suppose this is one reason why big publishers churn out high priced games that are overly long and descend into repetitiveness after the first act. I think the first game that made this painfully obvious to me was the original Halo where they didn't even bother to make even a slight change to the two corridors you grind your way down for most the game. Ok, I exaggerate there but only slightly.

It shouldn't be used as a be-all, end-all sort of metric, but it's critically important to keep in mind. Ultimately, some sort of value metric should be taken into account. If The Last of Us cost $6000 instead of $60, would you still justify putting it on this list? Of course not, because for most people, it's not worth playing at that cost.

The important thing for the value metric isn't $/time to complete, it's $/total time played. Fallout 3 was possible to "beat" in a matter of just a few hours. But for most people who enjoyed it, Fallout 3 wasn't a "sub-10 hour game" it was a game that took 40+ 70+ 100+ hours of playtime to put aside. A game like Stanley Parable (full disclosure, I have not played and have no interest in playing it) doesn't really have much for replayability. According to the poster you're replying to, it can be fully completed in less than an hour. If the experience of the game is worth $15 to you, it's worth $15 to you. That's not much different from the cost/hour metric for taking a date to a movie. But in the realm of video games, there's many far better value propositions, and that should definitely be taken into account before purchasing a game. For anyone on a budget, $15 for an hour of The Stanley Parable means $0 for Rogue Legacy (a game I got 37 hours out of) or $0 for FTL + Binding of Isaac (combined for 27 hours for me) or $0 for Terraria (124 hours and counting).

None of which means anything to me. I'd rather pay $10 for a half hour of the best entertainment than $1 for 20 hours of dull, mediocre entertainment. If budget vs time is your primary metric, then the only games you should be playing are Free-to-Play, you can get as many hours as you want from them. Woot, infinite ratio!

Sure, if you reduce your budget down to a zero-sum game you have to make hard choices about what you might like, and you won't always guess right - but apparently you did buy and play all of them, so what does that say? I thought I might like Dead Island but I hated it, I could have spent that money on something I might have enjoyed. My friends loved it. Bad investments, wrong choices, and personal taste are just part of life, let it go.

You have to get outside your box and perceive that some other people value completely different things than you do, not just the same things with maybe slightly different weights. Once you figure out what you value and determine what other people value, you can decide if their opinion has any meaning to you, but you certainly can't demand that they value what you do. I honestly have no idea how long I've played any games this year, I just remember which ones were fun and which weren't.

But that's an absurd false dichotomy. You can pay $15 for an hour of above average entertainment, or $15 for 100 hours of a game that's interesting enough for you to play for 100 hours. I don't know where people come up with this idea that somehow a game worth playing for 100 hours is somehow inherently inferior entertainment than a game not capable of retaining anyone's attention for more than 60 minutes.

Can short games be entertaining? Sure. Does being short someone automatically make the short time you play in inherently better than the longer time played in an obviously far more entertaining game? There's absolutely no reason to ever even attempt to make that argument.

This. Unless you only have an hour or two to play games a week (And prefer to take less than a year to beat a game), this argument is flawed completely.

Nevermind the fact that TSP is a few good one liners separated by walking through the same office, same hallways 16 times just to press the green button instead of the red button that you pressed last time so you can sit back and listen to the narrator talk for 3 minutes only to start over AGAIN. Gone Home didn't even have that- it was literally just 1-2 hours and you were done. No replay value.

As little as 4 years ago indie games used to be $10. Not this $20-25 they are releasing at now. And as little as 6 years ago they were Source Mods or on Newgrounds. This Indie Game Price Hiking needs to stop. Very few indie games are worth that much money, and none of them made it-- only the pretentious ones made this list.

Nearly all indie games are still $10 - $15. What are you talking about?

Before XBLA and Steam most indies were $20-30, like Spiderweb's games and the old indies that you would find on Gametunnel (Gish, Puppygames, etc.). They made more sales on the new, more popular storefronts at lower prices.

The Last of Us was a pretty mediocre game, no idea why it's getting so many GOTY awards. Maybe thanks to the big marketing budget?

wut? The Last of Us was an amazing game. Technically almost perfect with a great story and some of the best gameplay I have seen as well. Not sure how they pulled it off. Apart from the impeccable gameplay, story and art direction the gameplay was great as well:

- a real challenge that forced you to search for materials and actually use all gameplay options. (like building molotov cocktails and nail bombs. Too many games give you all these options and then you disregard them because its easier to just hit bad guys over the head. In this game every found scissor counts )

- Great stealth eerily realistic enemies ( apart from not seeing your partners which would have been a gameplay cluster fuck I suppose, but if you ignore that they behaved great, raising alarm when seeing dead colleagues swarming out to search you etc. )

- Nicely varied gameplay, zombies require totally different techniques than men with guns. Later levels give you plenty of options.

And so on and so forth. The last of us was a master piece. Now I am not sure I had as much fun with it as with some Uncharted games that have a lighter note, more bombastic settings and lighter gameplay but that is the same as choosing a summer blockbuster over a dark survival horror movie. You know the latter has better actors and story line but you still have more fun when the secret base of the bad guys explodes.

It's worth noting that the version you reviewed no longer exists. They have since patched the game and completely changed it. For the worse, IMO, it seems like certain levels now require using powerups and they yanked out most of the interesting challenge restrictions.

I agree the origianl PvZ 2 was brilliantly designed and balanced perfectly for those who refused to use any powerups. It was the difficult version of PvZ I always wanted! I would even go so far as to say it may have been my favorite tower defense game of all time. But now that game is lost to time and can't be played anywhere on any platform.

It's not lost to time. The old apk is still around and not hard to find. I won't say more because I will not encourage piracy, especially considering the hard work behind this game.

It's worth noting that the version you reviewed no longer exists. They have since patched the game and completely changed it. For the worse, IMO, it seems like certain levels now require using powerups and they yanked out most of the interesting challenge restrictions.

I agree the origianl PvZ 2 was brilliantly designed and balanced perfectly for those who refused to use any powerups. It was the difficult version of PvZ I always wanted! I would even go so far as to say it may have been my favorite tower defense game of all time. But now that game is lost to time and can't be played anywhere on any platform.

It's not lost to time. The old apk is still around and not hard to find. I won't say more because I will not encourage piracy, especially considering the hard work behind this game.

Far Cry 3 is on my "to get" list, but, again, #1 was so-so and #2 was a bit of a let down... so no rush.

The combo of Far Cry 3 and Blood Dragon is so far ahead of those two games that I don't even remember them anymore. I never made it to the end of FC1 (just turned into a spammy slog of bullet sponges and flying one-hit-kills) and FC2 was just plain clunky. By comparison, I think I played all but a handful of side missions in FC3 (the trials, mostly) and am replaying Blood Dragon now.

Thanks to the original Crysis and Far Cry 3, FC 1 and 2 are now relegated to the same part of my brain where I repress my memories of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls.

Far Cry 3 was also m y best game of 2013, I replayed it several times (something I rarely do). I especially liked open world "stealth".

BUT, FarCry3 did have one BIG negative point for me: inability to remap special keys like ENTER or BACKSPACE. I use those keys for my primary actions, and without those, playing is no-go for me.

For FarCry3 I went thru ordeal of finding method to unpack game files, change config, repack files as patch, apply patch ... and it worked, showing that they could have EASILY allowed those keys.

I did buy Bloo9dDragon, but it had same problem with key remap, and I did not have time/will to find if it is possible to do similar thing. In future I will not buy any of their games before I can check if it is possible to remap at least ENTER.

BTW, with majority of modern engines supporting remap of special keys, and with obvious ability even of Dunia2 engine (one in FC3) to do it, I really wonder why they are not allowing it in game.

That is completely wrong. Simcity 2013 is just like Simcity 3000. Traffic was simulated by randomly spitting out a few agents, bus fare income were determined based on how far the agents would travel from a bus stop to their destination. ( http://www.sc3000.com/knowledge/showarticle.cfm?id=1062 ) Saying that Simcity is worse then the previous Simcity games is wrong. It's better to say that it's a step backwards and it is all the worse for being able to see the underlying interactions of agents for it shows how Potemkin it is. But it isn't like previous SimCity games were any better. In SimCity 4, a duplex had around a dozen sims (two Sims per room?) living in side.

This was what Simcity was about, being in control of a city, and occasionally fighting with the city, putting down riots and balancing your city's needs with your own preferences and future plans. Not "gardening," some kind of game design concept for city building games, in which you zone things and watch it grow. This misconception on how to design a city game hasn't just ruined Simcity, it has ruined Tropico. There no longer exists games where you have to fight with the free agents of your city. Instead you have mindless vegetables roaming around.

It is worth noting Magnasanti. A Simcity 3000 city with 6 million people, no roads, and a totalitarian police state on top of it.

Thanks for the recommendation of Guacamelee. Picked it up as part of the Steam Winter Sale and I'm really enjoying it.

Having purchased and finished a few titles on this list that I missed since my last post (Like Swapper which was super easy, but made it on this list due to extistentialism fart sniffing like most of the indie titles on it) I believe Guacamelee is the only indie title on this lit that I agree belongs on the top 20. I will say, though, that if you are playing multiplayer, some of the later areas will all but force the second player to drop out and watch you do the puzzle/platforming and it dragged a smidge near the end.

Still, a very good well paced game. WELL worth the money you paid for it.

Your description for Divekick seriously offends me and gives me the impression that you don't like "games". This is beyond opinion now; you have explicitly stated that you have no idea what a "fighting game" is, and you have championed a literal joke game to "prove" this. You will never be able to understand that this kind of thinking is what causes your situation, not anything the game does. You will always be forced to somewhat get the point yet completely get it wrong at the same time, because that's how people like you work.

You're lying to yourself and to everyone else, for the sake of perpetuating that lie among people. All of that "cruft" is where the "positioning, head games, feints, counter feints, and a battle of steely wills" is coming from; every single attempt at "simplifying" this needed to be balanced with something else. The entire point of Divekick was to ignore this and to make a stupid joke game that was specifically meant to make fun of people like you and just like everyone ever was expecting, it completely failed; you love it, it's what you've always wanted.

You're not "casuals", you're just a bunch of idiots who have no virtues and otherwise don't care about anything. People like that are the kind that tend to make these top X lists to begin with, solely to get a rise out of people or to protect certain status quos. Your little version has certainly accomplished its tasks with me, but not in the way you'd think... not that you'd know or care, it's all the same to you.

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in Pittsburgh, PA.